Wicked star Mamie Parris, above, has an understudy who defied grave expectations as Elphaba in "Wicked" has a understudy.

Seasoned theatergoers will likely recognize the sinking feeling David Vest experienced at the Sunday afternoon performance of “Wicked.”

The national tour of the blockbuster musical — starring Mamie Parris as Elphaba and Alli Mauzey as Glinda — is having a fourth, robust production at Denver’s Buell Theatre.

“I was disappointed when I first saw the insert that Mamie Parrish would not be in this show,” wrote Vest in a morning email. “I immediately went to the who’s who,” he continued, where he was again let down to see that the understudy didn’t have “any real credits.”

Tonight begins the six-week run of “Wicked” at Denver’s Buell Theatre. And, says Denver Center Attractions’ honcho Randy Weeks, there are no signs of flagging fondness for the musical about Oz’s witches Elphaba and Glinda.

“Denver’s the only city with a four-peat,” he said on the phone earlier today.

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.